Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion. Causation, Realism, and David Hume [2014][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: March 27, 2014
In this revised and updated edition of The Secret Connexion, Galen Strawson explores one of the most discussed subjects in all philosophy: David Hume's work on causation. Strawson challenges the standard view of Hume, according to which he thinks that there is no such thing as causal influence, and that there is nothing more to causation than things of one kind regularly following things things of another kind. He argues that Hume does believe in causal influence, but insists that we cannot know its nature. The regularity theory of causation is indefensible, and Hume never adopted it in any case.

Reviews
"a comprehensive and persuasively argued position ... exceptionally well written." --International Studies in Philosophy

"thoroughly convincing" --London Review of Books

"beautifully argued" --Times Literary Supplement

"it stretched me till I twanged" --Craig Raine, Observer

"His style is lively, even impassioned. Best of all, he shares the reader's amusement at his own fevered combing of the text." --Australian Journal of Philosophy

About the Author
Galen Strawson is Professor of Philosophy at Reading University, UK, and the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford (1987-2000). From 2004 to 2007 he was also Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He has held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University (1993 and 2012), New York University (1997), Rutgers University (2000), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010). Strawson received his degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford and studied at the Ecole normale superieure and the Sorbonne in Paris (1977-8).